{"id":164,"date":"2011-11-14T19:06:55","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T01:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/?p=164"},"modified":"2011-11-14T19:06:55","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T01:06:55","slug":"one-of-the-cool-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/2011\/11\/one-of-the-cool-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the cool kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I feel special. Like I belong in a very exclusive club. Like just because I read, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m that much more ahead of the game compared to so many people. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like getting to be one of the cool kids before that which is dubbed cool becomes universally recognized.<\/p>\n

The movie trailer for THE HUNGER GAMES set the interwebs on fire today.\u00c2\u00a0 Lots of excitement about it. LOTS.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is good.\u00c2\u00a0 The little we saw looked to have the right tone and feel.\u00c2\u00a0 While some online denizens balked at the casting choices (Actual quote from months ago when the casting was announced: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t play Peeta. HE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S NOT BLONDE!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), I have a feeling that if they nail the movie as the trailer suggests they did, all (or most) will be forgiven.<\/p>\n

And while the majority of the buzz I saw online came from people who are excited to see this series of books come to life, I also saw quite a few people saying things like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Guess I should get around to reading these now\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At first, I was really sad that it took a movie trailer to get people interested in the books.\u00c2\u00a0 David Levithan was recently quoted as saying that you have to think of the movie as a two hour commercial for the book. Makes a lot of sense. And if the trailer inspires people to pick up the books, more power to Suzanne Collins.<\/p>\n

But I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t keep from smirking just a bit smugly.\u00c2\u00a0 Because I got there first. I bought HUNGER GAMES the day it was released. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve known for a few years now that these books were special. I was one of the cool kids. And now many are aspiring to be as cool as me (OK, maybe not, but you know what I mean).<\/p>\n

Children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s books are becoming more and more of a bellwether to pop culture shifts that are felt beyond the targeted audience. Forget the phenomena of Harry Potter.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a perfect storm that we likely won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see again in our lifetimes. But I feel several waves of pop culture patterns can be traced back to children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s books. A little while ago, my husband mused that with shows like ONCE UPON A TIME and GRIMM tapping into fairy tale mythology, it wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be long before we started seeing it in YA books. I got to gleefully tell him that YA was years ahead of the recent spate of fairy tale nostalgia. Modern twists were cool in YA before Hollywood came along to do their take.<\/p>\n

So, please non-readers, ooh and aah at the movie trailer (it really does look pretty nifty) and threaten to toddle down to the bookstore to get one of them book thingies people are talking about. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just continue to toil as someone you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet know is cool.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, once you figure it out, I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be cool anymore because you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll appropriate it as your own. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fine. You know why? Because I keep reading. And I know what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll love before you do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I feel special. Like I belong in a very exclusive club. Like just because I read, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m that much more ahead of the game compared to so many people. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like getting to be one of the cool kids before that which is dubbed cool becomes universally recognized. The movie trailer for THE HUNGER […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}